


Counterpressure

by frangipani



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, PWP, Questionable decision-making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:09:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7578880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/pseuds/frangipani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Mara, everything hurts. Post-Darksaber.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counterpressure

**Author's Note:**

> Unresolved. Read at your own risk.

Luke sensed Mara's arrival from the moment she’d set down. 

He’d been meditating...or trying to. Peace had eluded him since his return from Coruscant and more so after receiving Callista’s message.

He pushed the thought aside and focused on the flickering flame. The meditation techniques he favored relied on no focusing object, but given his recent turmoil, he’d opted to draw from elsewhere. He relaxed his eyes on it, letting the flame be the center of his visual field, all the while keeping his awareness open, tapping into the flow of the Force. He sensed Tionne at the library, Kam at one of the exercise rooms, and the students, some together in the lounging areas, others long retired to their rooms.

Mara had decided to use the landing pad outside. The students had been accustomed to sporadic visits and would probably think she was just another supply ship.

Luke blinked, the flame once more reemerging in his vision. Meditation seemed an exercise in futility. Sensing Mara inevitably reminded him of the last time she’d come. Of her information about the Hutts, of the warmth of Callista’s hand in his as they talked to Leia. 

He’d been so hopeful then. Naive. He’d been hopeful too when he’d first received her message. 

_I’ll be tempted again if I work too closely with you..._

With a grunt, Luke reached forward and extinguished the flame with his fingers. He should go downstairs to see what news Mara brought this time. For once, he found he didn’t want to. It was a discomfiting knowledge. Whatever news she brought about the latest crisis, the latest trouble, right now at this moment, he didn’t care. He examined the feeling in himself, allowed it space to unfurl within him, feeling like he was letting himself sink down slowly. He would bring it under control soon enough.

For now he looked in the direction of the extinguished flame. It had vanished into the dark of his room, unseen, but it was still there.

What is time, when one day seems so much like the next? he asked Callista silently. When nothing ever seems to change. She’d come into his life, and just as suddenly she was gone, like she’d never existed at all.

Had it only been a month?

Mara’s presence at his door flickered in his awareness. With a sigh, he cast the indifference away. He stood mentally flicking the door switch in the control panel, the lights were next.

He rubbed at his face before turning to the doorway where she still stood.

“Was I disturbing you?” She was reserved, probably knew about Callista. Mara always had her means.

He shook his head. “I was done meditating anyway. You have some information for me?”

“Not this time,” she said.

“So then…?” It crossed his mind that maybe she’d offer to finish her training. He’d take it even if she were moved out of pity. He'd never doubted her abilities or her capacity for good. But that was a ridiculous thought.

True enough, she shook her head. “Just a visit. I did say that sometimes I don’t mind your company.”

He offered her a wan smile. “Can’t say I’m good company these days.”

The corner of her lip twitched. “You’re not going to try?” 

“You’d see through it. How are things?”

She made a face. “You don’t care. I didn’t come for small talk.”

He frowned at her, taken aback. “I care. I always care.”

She shook her head at him. Maybe she’d been expecting him to pounce on her second statement. He felt petty for denying her that, but he didn’t feel like her baiting.

Mara brushed a loose strand of her hair back. “You know what? Nevermind, I was just in the sector and just thought I’d sleep better planetside. I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow.”

She’d made it back to the door before he called her name. It was a mistake and he knew it.

“Why did you come?”

Mara turned around. “Thought you could use the company.” She hesitated, her hand nearing the controls that would open the door.

Mara seemed to be waiting for a reply and he forced another smile. “Thank you, but--”

“Don’t thank me.” She scowled.

“Because you came here, now, but you’re not doing this for me.” He sighed, this was exactly the kind of infuriating conversation he didn’t want to be having. Not right now. “Alright. Good night, Mara.”

Her anger was swift. She had trouble controlling it. If he weren’t in need of some measure of peace he would take the high road, but maybe Callista had taken that from him when she left as well. 

“I guess it never gets in the way,” Luke murmured. “Your anger, but it does plateau your abilities. Clouds your sight.”

Her anger deepened. Part of him wondered how he'd been able to get such a reaction so fast. “You can keep your assessments to yourself. I didn’t come here to train.”

“I know,” he said softly. “It’s too much of a waste of your valuable time.”

Something else flickered in her Force presence, too quick to catch, but he wasn’t intent on gauging the subtleties of her feelings anyway. She laughed low suddenly. “Go on.”

He didn’t respond.

Mara cocked her head. “You think I’m ungrateful? After all you’ve done for me?”

He scoffed. “No. You haven’t let me do anything for you. You don’t let anyone do anything unless you’re forced to.”

“And that’s why you refused to train me.”

That garnered an eyebrow raise. “Refused to train you? When did I ever refuse to train you?”

“The week I was here I think I saw Kam and Corran more than you.” Her mouth twisted. “My meager talents were just not as interesting to work with. Or maybe Durron’s story was sadder than mine. You’ve always been a sucker for those.”

There was no graceful way to respond. He had hoped when she’d first arrived...part of him had never expected her to show in the first place. But so close to Gantoris and with so much uncertainty afoot, it’d been too much to risk. After the smoke cleared. Once he had clarity, he could focus on her. It was too much to risk otherwise.

The smoke had never cleared. She just left. That hurt.

“Come to think of it,” Mara was saying. “ _She_ had a sad story--”

His reply was quick and hard. “Don’t talk about her.”

Mara’s head snapped back as if she’d been slapped. “What if I do?”

“Then you can leave.”

“And what if I don’t? You’d make me? Like flicking on a switch…” She gestured to her head. “Suddenly I’d want to be anywhere but here…”

He shook his head, recoiling. “I wouldn't.”

“Then you’d just grab me and throw me out?” She leaned forward, and smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. “I’d like to see you try that.”

He took a step back. “Please leave, Mara. I don’t feel up to these games with you.”

“Why do you think they’re games?”

“Because they mean nothing.” He was taken again to the passenger seat of her sleek Smuggler’s Alliance ship, acceleration like a hand pressing him down as she rocketed past the treetops at breakneck speed, smiling like the present was hers alone. She had none of that levity here. She was just… cruel. What had changed? 

He rubbed his face. “I guess it’s too much to hope that you might show me some modicum of …”

“Of what?”

Sympathy. Compassion. Kindness.

He closed his eyes. It might be. With Mara everything hurt.

“Nothing. Please leave.”

Mara lifted up two fingers. She ticked of one. “You can compel me to leave.” She ticked of the second. “Or you can throw me out.” 

“And this is for what?” he blurted. “Because you think I refused to train you?” He was angry, but it was a relief to feel something other than that crushing emptiness. Mara couldn’t lay the blame at his feet, especially when he’d hoped so much that things could have been different. “You’ve come here _now_ to argue with me about your own inability to be serious about anything that didn’t have credits attached to it?”

He might be being unfair. He didn’t care.

She sneered. “I wasn’t going to stick around getting secondhand lessons like I was some stranger you ran into in some backrocket dump.”

“That was exactly what you wanted. You should be thanking me for making it so easy.” 

“You don’t know anything about what I want.”

“Now? No, I don’t.” Maybe Mara’s past playfulness had been a carefully concocted lie. Maybe she'd be bidding her time, seething, and waited for just the right moment to swim in the wreckage.

And that hurt too, maybe the most. 

Luke had dared to think with Callista nothing would. After he found she was alive. The first time. Before they knew the cost.

He should take one step, then another until he was outside. Maybe the fresh air would recenter him.

“You’re not good company,” he found himself saying, but he didn’t want to leave his room, didn’t want to spend another night looking up at the stars wondering how far Callista had run just to feel safe from him.

Mara stepped close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her green eyes. “We can’t always choose the company we keep.”

He laughed. It was in so many ways the perfect opening. “Oh, I've never wanted to keep you from all those important and lucrative business deals. You’re losing credits as we speak. How will you ever justify it to Karrde?”

She frowned, the statement finally hitting the mark, and he allowed himself a dark satisfaction at it, cheap hit as it was. “Did you know? That I would never finish my training?”

He bit the inside of his cheek. “Yes,” he lied. 

Something twisted in her face. “And you still gave me your old lightsaber.”

You left. Without so much as a word. Luke forced a bitter smile. “Like you said, maybe I’m just a sucker for sad stories.”

Her face crumpled for an instant, just an instant, and then it was back to her usual blankness. He had hurt her, he realized. 

That didn't feel satisfying at all. It felt hollow.

Too late to take it back. Too inadequate to apologize. Admitting to the worst of himself. He’d _wanted_ to hurt her, he thought with horror. No matter how cutting she'd been in the past, he had never wanted to before. He'd become so small. 

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Luke reached out to her with the Force. There was dense swirl of emotion that he assumed was her hurt and he quickly withdrew, shame curdling within him. 

“Why did she leave?” Mara asked suddenly. Her hands went to her jacket. She slipped it off, folded it and put it on his chair, looped a hand through her holdout blaster holster and pulled it off.

“Callista,” she said, as if he could forget. She hung the holster on top of the chair. “Why did she leave?”

He didn’t know what to say, but she went on as if she hadn’t expected a response.

“She talked to me once. When I told you about the Hutts. Asked if I had ever been interested. In you.”

Luke furrowed his brow. Mara undid her belt efficiently, dropped it on the seat of the chair beside the holster.

His eyes went to the lightsaber still clipped on to the belt. “Why would she think--”

“My question exactly.”

“And?”

“I don’t know.” She leaned back against the desk.

“Why all this, Mara?”

“So why did she leave?” She gave a quick turn of her head. “As long as we’re being honest.”

He clenched his jaw, wanting to say, I _wasn’t_ honest. I had hoped for the best of you. But he'd hurt her and he couldn't blame her for wanting to exact her price.

“I made her want to touch the Force,” he finally said, tried to be as matter of fact as possible. “But the Dark Side was all she could touch. She was afraid I’d make her fall.”

Saying it out loud made it worse.

Mara stepped forward. “You’d take that risk. To keep her.”

He looked away.

“You would.”

She reached up and cupped his nape, her palm warm against his skin. He shut his eyes. “Don’t ask me to talk about her.”

It was not altogether unexpected that she'd kiss him. Part of him thought she only wanted him off balance. No matter the reason, he was caught between the pressure of her palm and the press of her lips.He would have pulled away, but incongruously, he thought it was safer to kiss Mara than it was to be cut by her words, or worse, to give in to the temptation of hurting her back. Maybe that was why he folded his arms around her, why he tangled his hand in her hair. Everything was different.

With Mara everything hurt.

Except this, he was discovering. Kissing her didn’t hurt at all. She melted against him in a way he never knew Mara could. It made him pull her tighter against him, almost but not quite forgetting that his hold need to just to shift a little and she’d draw blood.

All the more reason not to let her go, to kiss her more fiercely. She made a surprised sound when he bit down on her lower lip, but deepened the kiss, bringing her hands at either side of his face. He thought he could kiss her forever if it meant this silence, all his focus anchored in the lean of her body against his, the luxurious feel of her hair through his fingers, the brush of her tongue against his. For all that, it might be the most reckless thing he’d ever done. 

On impulse, he tugged at the hairband holding her hair in place. Her head tilted back, his lips drifting to the side of her mouth, and lower to her exposed neck. Another tug and the band gave, her hair falling down just as he found the pulse point just under her jaw. Mara let out a cracked gasp and that made him pull away to gaze down at her.

Her hair was unruly, bright vermilion, and the gold tinge in her eyes was no longer visible when her eyelids fluttered open -- they were all pupil, night dark. A blush spread across her cheeks -- not a blush he corrected himself, just a rush of blood. Mara took a heaving breath. Then another. He realized his own heart was beating fast, that his pulse thrummed in his ears. His eyes fell on the pale pink crescent of her lips, full from their kiss. Much as he wanted he couldn’t but see it as a siren call to oblivion, and maybe because of it he ached to kiss her again.

He wanted her, and he shouldn’t, especially not now. He _knew better_. Two broken pieces never make a whole. 

“You’re thinking about her,” she said huskily. “Ca--”

Luke kissed her again. He could have put a finger across her lips, but that wasn't as certain as reducing her words to shared breaths, drinking forgetfulness from her mouth. She tasted like regret, but it was a finite thing. She’d never given him cause to think his hopes for her had always been anything but his own. 

He pulled away reluctantly, hoping she'd give him an out, save him from himself. “This isn’t fair to you.”

“Tell me more about her.” Mara’s palms were at either side of his face and he felt a sudden tightness in his chest.

“Don’t.”

“Did you kiss her like that?”

“No.” His eyes roved over Mara’s upturned face, her half parted lips. His hand knotted among the strands of her hair as his other stroked down the center of her back. What she was saying should be awful enough to make him turn away and leave, but instead he slanted his mouth over Mara’s again, his hand tightening in her hair, his other dropping to her hip. Mara kissed him back hard, her arms looping around his neck drawing him closer yet. To feel her breathe, to wrap his arm around her waist and feel her soft and bruising at the same time was a paradox. 

It was obvious enough from the press of her bodies, the intensity of their kisses where the evening would go. Luke meant to preempt her, nonetheless. “Spend the night with me.”

Mara chuffed a laugh, it became a sharp indrawn breath once he found her pulse point again, brushing his lips down her neck, winding his hand in her hair and tugging lightly to expose more skin. “That’s what you wanted isn’t it?” he whispered beside her ear.

“Arrogant,” she said it between fast breaths, her hands drifting under his shirt, her touch electric once her fingers glided across his midriff. 

He slid his hand from her hair and drew it down to her arm, tracing the sleek muscle. She’d been practicing. Why? The second time she left he’d thought she kept the lightsaber out of spite. 

Luke had no idea why she’d accepted it in the first place.

He broke off to say,“I wouldn’t presume…” but he was lifting her tank up and over her head, and the thought dispelled into the ether. He trailed his fingers down her sternum between her breasts, and kissed her again, sucking at her lower lip, let his hand cover her breast and squeeze hard. She moaned, throaty and insensate like he never knew she could, and he was getting her bra off her, inching her back onto his pallet, breathless kiss after kiss. 

Her back hit the mattress and she sighed, "You would.” 

Luke pulled away fractionally from where his tongue was tracing a peaked nipple. Her eyes were heavy lidded and gorgeous, and his breath caught in his throat. He could think of no better way to drown them both.

His hand skimmed across her waist, hooked along the waistband of her pants. He thought he might want to take her apart like an intricate piece of machinery, see what made her tick. Just the same, he thought he could put her back together better than before, make her even more implacable. He was sure he could. Maybe he’d always wanted to. 

Maybe that was arrogant. 

“Did she like this?”

He glared down at her. "Stop." 

She laughed, head bent back, dark and full like night itself. Her hand threaded in his hair, she bit down on her lips reddened from so much kissing. Luke couldn’t resist leaning forward and covering them with his own yet again. He only pulled away because she was yanking up his shirt and he dragged it off, flung it somewhere unseen, too preoccupied with returning to the feel of her skin against his.

Mara ran her nails down his back making him hiss and he dragged his teeth hard along her collarbone. Since she'd left the first time he’d made himself think of her as titanium hard and just as unyielding. She twisted under him like his mouth burned her, even as her arms wrapped around him with the strength of kshyy vine. Luke trailed his hands along the underside of her breasts, head resting just below her shoulder where he could hear the erratic beat of her heart in tandem with her wild breaths. 

Mara's voice was a choked half breath when she spoke, “Did you touch her like this?”

Luke pulled away and Mara folded a leg, flipping them, ending astride his chest. She pushed her hair over one shoulder where it streamed down her arm and pooled just below his shoulder as she leaned down over him.

“Why?" He was close enough he had to pull her down to kiss her again, messy, his palm gliding down her arched back. “Why would you ask that?” He didn’t wait for a response, nothing felt as real as her skin. There was no challenge at all to darting his hand up her outer thigh, pulling so Mara lost the balance she had on her knee. A quick twist of his hips and she landed hard on her back as he moved to the side, the air whooshing out of her in a surprised grunt.

It did occur to him that he could needle her over her carelessness, that he could prod at her pride, but he cared little over petty victories when he could brush feather light kisses just below her navel, and hear her moan. He undid the fastenings of her pants, looking up at her as he slid them past her hips, the scent of her arousal maddening. Mara lifted up on her forearms and met his gaze, her own inscrutable.

“I don’t want you to forget,” she murmured.

Luke trailed his fingers from her bared knee to her inner thigh. Too late for that, but he didn't say it. Her underwear was nondescript, white, the part between her legs, soaked translucent enough to see the dark of her curls, and he cupped her. Mara's hips bucked against the sudden contact and she let out a strangled moan like she meant to hold it back and failed. The fabric was wet beyond question. He didn't wait to get them off, pushed the fabric aside awkwardly to touch her. She was so wet, and she moaned in a higher pitch with every inquisitive graze of his fingers. It couldn't be him she wanted at base, she wouldn't be trying so hard to conjure up someone else's phantom if she did. 

It was his hurt she was after, and for now he'd made his peace with that. He couldn’t withdraw just yet, there were more reedy sounds to draw from her. He looked up at Mara again, her eyes had drifted shut, breathing rapid and shallow. He removed his hand and she breathed out slowly like it was painful. 

He brought his mouth to hers and her arms enfolded him again. She broke off and moved away to kick off her underwear, pants and boots. He took the opportunity to rid himself of his own clothing, eyes on her. Mara had shoved her own off to the side of the pallet and stood unembarrassed, wholly comfortable in her own skin. Already it felt like too long since he’d touched her, but he told himself there was pleasure enough in looking, in letting her come to him.

“What did she do for you?”

He blinked, then averted his gaze in distaste, frustrated. “You keep making this--”

“What it is.”

Luke clasped her wrist. “What you want it to be.”

Mara shook her head. “Tell yourself whatever you want. I know--”

Luke had better things to do than argue. He pulled on her wrist hard. Mara yelped as she lost her balance, landing sprawled on her stomach on top of his pallet. She got up and he had stood, wrapped an arm around her waist and pulling her to the edge of the bed, brought his other hand between her legs, she gasped wetly, hips hitching. Tension radiated from her with every path his fingers traced, skin molten to the touch. When he sank two fingers inside her she shuddered violently, clenching around them. The loud quivering moan she released ricocheted through him like quicksilver and he found himself biting down just behind her shoulder. 

Mara’s moan unraveled further, she pushed back against him and he withdrew his fingers, hand at her waist dropping to her hip, joined by his other at her other hip. She moaned again when he entered her, meaning to go slow out of unfamiliarity, but she pushed back, and he was fully inside her, the movement tearing a splintered groan out of him. She felt beyond amazing, vise tight, not finite at all. Luke didn’t dare himself question it, not right now.

That was where the edge lay. 

He simply breathed out against her shoulder blade, catching himself. His eyes fell on the reddened spot where he’d bit her. He pressed his lips against it, licked across the reddened skin and she sucked in a breath. One of her hands reached back towards his thigh, squeezing hard. 

Luke responded instinctively, thrusting into her, pleasure unspooling from where their bodies met. He brought his hand from her hip to her lower back, the curve of it inexplicably beautiful. Her hair parted at either side of her nape, the bared skin creamy white and vulnerable. He pressed his lips against it as he pushed into her. 

Mara moaned, but the sound cut into her sharp breaths like she’d quieted it. He leaned forward to cup her breast, thumb stroking across the nipple, this time she cried out low and rough. Luke tangled his hand in her hair, a fistful of it, pulled, and her lower back was against his stomach, her neck completely exposed, he dropped his head to nuzzle at it. She shivered, and he thrust into her hard enough for her hand to move from his thigh to the mattress to give herself more stability, more sweet resistance to the push of his hips. He let go of her hair to bring a clumsy hand just over where their bodies met, felt the beginnings of her moan just before she cut it off into a rough exhale, clenching around him, and he was lost to his own release.

She stayed quiet for a long moment, unmoving when he’d expected her to pull away. He had never known her as well as he thought he did. 

“Was this how it was with her?” Mara rasped.

The slow boil of regret lead him to whisper, “You’re nothing like her.”

He should have qualified it and explained, because he felt the lock of her muscles as Mara tensed, even if she didn’t pull away. To explain meant thinking about Callista as more than a hazy dream and he couldn’t. He wrapped his arms tight around Mara who never cared about what he wanted to give her. Mara, who always left without a word, without single look back because she owed him nothing, but for some reason he couldn’t figure out, _kept coming back_. 

“Why did you leave the first time?” he asked.

Several beats passed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

She disentangled herself from him and went to the 'fresher. He searched for his clothing. He thought he knew. When Mara came back out she went to grab her own. He watched her with a sinking feeling and sat on the bed. “Try me.”

She scoffed. “You don’t believe in trying.”

“Well,” he pursed his lips. “The aphorism refers more to a mental state--”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

He stood and touched her arm. “Try me.”

She gave him a humorless smile as she dressed. “All or nothing, right? I chose nothing.”

He flinched. “You thought you’d fail.”

She shrugged and went for her holster. “Maybe.” Her lips curved again, scalpel sharp. “It doesn’t matter anyway, since you knew I would.”

I lied, he wanted to say. But then she’d know he’d said it just to hurt her and that was even worse. 

He was an idiot.

Luke watched in silence as she put her utility belt on, the lightsaber conspicuous on it. Her eyes flickered up to him as if she expected him to ask why she kept it, but he knew he had lost the right to ask. He looked away.

“The room I stayed at is still free?” Mara asked.

Luke nodded. “It’s yours.There’s always a place for you here.”

Mara grunted and grabbed her jacket. “That's a nice sentiment.”

“It’s true.”

Mara’s hand went up to her hair. She twisted it into a messy bun and snapped the hair tie on. “Even if she comes back? After this? How would you ever explain? Maybe you wouldn't,” she mused.

She was already hitting the controls and the door hissed open. He had the impression she didn’t care what he’d say.

He made himself say the truth as he felt it in his bones.“Callista is never coming back.” It hurt surprisingly less than he expected. He could change that no more than he could change who he was.

Luke wasn’t even sure Mara heard him as she walked out, disappearing into the dimmed corridor. Bizarrely, the only thing that made it better was knowing that, like the candle, she was still there. He needed only to reach out to sense her, even if he wouldn’t.

She was gone by dawn.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Undeserved](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14846241) by [JediDryad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediDryad/pseuds/JediDryad)




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